10 Clever Ways To Use Apple Intelligence

Here are 10 ways you can use the new Apple Intelligence features on your Mac that go beyond the basics.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here are ten clever uses for Apple Intelligence that you probably haven't seen anywhere else. 
So at this point plenty of people, including myself, have shown you how to do the basics with Apple Intelligence. Things like proofread your text, compose new text, create images in Image Playground, and even clean up your photos. But there are a lot more uses for Apple Intelligence. A lot of these involve Siri.
So, for instance, did you know you can use Siri plus ChatGPT to summarize documents. This can be documents that you're working on in Pages or it could be a PDF document you have opened in Preview. For instance here I've got a PDF document and it is just opened in the Preview App. I'm going to use Siri and ask about this document. Now when I do that it will ask me if it is okay to share this document with ChatGPT. So let's get a general summary here. When I press Return it's going to ask (Siri speaking, do you want me to send this content from Preview to ChatGPT). Notice I have to choose Screenshot or Full Content. Screenshot is only going to send what is visible on the screen. So in a case like this you want to choose Full Content. It will tell you the size here in case you're worried about upload size and then you can send. It is going to send it to ChatGPT and you'll get a result. 
Now that's great. But what is more useful is to actually ask questions about what is here. So, for instance, if you're looking for temperature information about the StudioDisplay then you can just ask that. (Siri speaking, do you want me to ask ChatGPT to answer that). Siri  answers. So you can basically asks questions about long text documents, PDF documents, Pages documents, Numbers documents, all sorts of things. 
Note that if I go to System Settings and then go to Apple Intelligence & Siri, under ChatGPT that's where I can sign into my account if I want to use my account instead of just using ChatGPT anonymously. I can also turn off Confirm ChatGPT Requests to simplify the entire process. 
So this works for spreadsheets in Numbers as well. It can analyze the spreadsheet without you having to convert it into text or anything. So, for instance, I can ask it to summarize this table here. What is this table about? (Siri says, do you want me to send this content from Numbers to ChatGPT?). I get a summary here. But you can also ask questions about the table. In this spreadsheet document which fruit is the most popular? (Siri says, do you want me to send this content from Numbers to ChatGPT? Siri replies, in the document the fruit with the highest total sales is orange). 
By the way, if you find these videos valuable consider joining the more than 2000 others that support MacMost at Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it at macmost.com/patreon.
You can also ask questions about photos. It could be a photo opened in Preview or one in the Photos App. So let's try to get information about this photo. What's the purpose of this line of rocks on the beach. (Siri says, Do you want me to send this photo to ChatGPT? Here's an answer from ChatGPT). 
Now you may already know that you can summarize an email in the Mail App. So you just scroll down a bit here and you get this Summarize Button. But if you look to the left it says one message. What if you went to a thread of messages. In View here I've got Organize By Conversation turned On and I can see here I've got several messages in this thread. I can click Summarize and it will summarize the entire thread. So if you need to catch up on a whole bunch of email that has gone back and forth between everybody before a meeting this is a good way to do it. 
Now not every app is going to have a document that you can send to ChatGPT. So sometimes using a screenshot is the best way to get information. So, for instance, here in the Maps App, which really has no Apple Intelligence features added, you can still ask ChatGPT about something and send a screenshot and get something back. So I'm going to use Siri here and I'm going to ask about this town. Tell me about this town. (Siri says, Do you want me to send the screenshot to ChatGPT?). So I'll send it. (Siri says, here's an answer from ChatGPT). You can see it figures out that this map is centered on this town here and gives me some information. I could continue to ask ChatGPT more questions if I want. I'm going to try that. Are there any good camping spots near here?  Siri says, here's an answer from ChatGPT.
Now, of course, the App on the Mac that is getting a lot of attention is Image Playground. It lets you generate images from your photos, from text, and all sorts of things. One of the problems you may have is you get the square image back. You can export this pretty easily. I'll drag and drop this here to the Desktop and you can see I get this square image here. But what if I didn't want the background. Remember you've got the ability to Copy subjects from an image and remove the background in various ways on your Mac. You can use it with these images. So, for instance, I can two-finger click or right click on this image here and choose Copy Subject. I'll get just a copy of the subject by looking at a new image from that. That's what I get. Of course in Preview you can also do the same thing by going to Tools and then Remove Background. So keep that in mind with all of these things you generate. You can always take them and then remove the background in Preview and lots of other apps as well.
Now you can use Writing Tools to proofread your writing. But what if you want to check the facts. You can do that with Siri and ChatGPT. You can do it for a whole document. So as an example here I'm not even going to use a Pages document. I'm going to use a Keynote document where all the information is on different slides. You can actually use Siri to ask ChatGPT to factcheck this for you. Check all the facts in this Keynote document to make sure they are correct. (Siri says, do you want me to send this content from Keynote to ChatGPT?). I'll say full content. (Siri says, here's an answer from ChatGPT).
Now one of the uses for AI is to create sample documents and sample text. You can do that with Siri & ChatGPT but it won't put it directly into a Numbers table. So you can just work around that by, say, using TextEdit and then using Edit and then under Writing Tools, Compose, and I'm going to ask it here to give me some sample data. I'm going to ask it to provide it in a CSV which I can easily import into a spreadsheet. So I get this good data here which is exactly what I want. I'm going to Copy it and then I can go here into this table and Paste it in. So I've got some quick sample data I can use in my spreadsheet. 
You can also use it to check lists for instance to see if you forgot anything. For instance in this example I've created a list of items to bring on a road trip. But before I send this email to a friend I'm going to see if I forgot anything here. I can do that by using the Apple Intelligence Tools. I can activate them here and I can say I want to compose. Notice one of the options here is to include all text. So I do want to include all text here, but the question I'm going to ask is this. Now because I have included all text it should realize that this is a list of things to bring on a road trip. It should see what I've already got and suggest some more. Then here you can see I can further refine it. Like this or I can just click away and then look at this list and incorporate what I want into the list up here. 
Another thing that comes in handy with AI is finding answers to questions. You can use this to not just answer your questions but other peoples questions as well. For instance, you get a text from somebody that is this. You can simply go to Compose the Message but instead of trying to figure it all out for yourself you can Control Click, right click, or two-finger click here. Use Writing Tools and then Compose. I'm just going to Paste in the question from right here and Return and it should come up with an answer. There you go! So now I can send this right to the person. If I think this is a little too verbose I can maybe select again and then let's go into Writing Tools again here and make it more concise and there we go. That's a little bit easier to follow. 
So hopefully what you've learned here is that there are a lot of features that Apple Intelligence that people aren't necessarily talking about yet. A lot of them involve using Siri with ChatGPT along with sending your document or a screenshot to get all sorts of information and answers. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 16 Responses to “10 Clever Ways To Use Apple Intelligence”

Arnie Keller

3 months ago

Why not cut to the chase and use ChatGPT directly? Doing it with Siri just seems to add extra steps.

Gary Rosenzweig

Arnie: You can if you want. That means installing another app and/or going to a web site. And then many of these ideas would require extra steps to upload the content.

Seth Bernstein

I noticed that when I asked chatgpt a question through apple AI i got a "cannot answer" reply, but when i went directly to chapgpt I got a full answer. so, i am not inclined to use apple AI

Seth: Did you try again though? This integration with Siri and ChatGPT is not even 2 weeks old, sounds like a glitch.

Christian Nelson

Thanks for the video, Gary. It looks to me like ChatGPT (or something similar) will totally replace Siri sometime in the near future. What do you think?

Christian: They will always work together. Siri can DO things on your devices (add reminders, set alarms, create notes, etc) and ChatGPT gives answers to questions. I don't see Apple letting ChatGPT do things without going through Siri.

John Russell

To what extent could I do the same things you've demonstrated on my brand new iPad Pro?

John: You can do a lot of these. Why not experiment and see?

John Wilson

Thanks, I have been using Chat GPT for a while and think using it through Siri is going to be helpful to all of us as it developes. Look forward to more from you.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Geoff

I tried opening a document in Preview then asking Siri to summarize it, but Siri just gave me search results for summarization tools. What might I be doing wrong? (MacBook Air; Apple M1; Sequoia 15.1.1)

I checked System Settings > Apple Intelligence & Siri. Nothing there about ChatGPT. I guess that's why.

Geoff: Update to 15.2.

Updated now. Feature works. Thanks.

Gene

Are any of these features available on iOS?

Gene: Yes. Assuming you have Apple Intelligence. Try them out for yourself.